Robert Waldmann I think this excellent article by Binyamin Appelbaum and Brady Dennis buries the lede. Appelbaum and Dennis argue that there is no need now and there was no need when the bonus contracts were written to retain the AIGFP scum crooks employees, because AIGs most risky contracts have been unwound. I consider the […]
George Will, guest-posting chez Berube: But hope is not a financial plan, and rewards come only to those who work for them. It is time for the Democrats to grow up, learn the lessons of adulthood, and begin dismantling a tax system which creates so many disincentives to wealth creation. Justice demands that bonuses must […]
by cactus The AIG Bonuses… A Letter to Our Leaders Back when the TARP was being passed, I noted among other things that a) it wouldn’t work, b) it would be gamed, and c) it would just serve to further enrich the same clowns who got us into this. I further suggested the obvious solution […]
rdan Limiting executive pay after bailouts is an Angry Bear post from last November. Seems to be relevant to the AIG and future Wall Street pay raises.
In Conversations with Economists (h/t Kevin Quinn at Econospeak), James Tobin refers to LBJ having made “a mistake” in “raising taxes to pay for the Viet Nam War.” Google Desktop can’t find the line of reasoning behind that in any of Tobin’s papers that have survived my migrating possibly-non-OCR PDFs over about six computers. Anyone […]
By Spencer In the industrial production report this morning February manufacturing output was reported to drop 0.8%. On the surface this looks bearish. But hours worked in manufacturing also fell 2.0% in February. Consequently, manufacturing productivity rose 1.2% in February. The smoothed three month growth rate of estimated productivity is 0.1% and the year over […]
Tilman Tacke & Robert J. Waldmann Do health outcomes not only depend on an individual’s absolute level of income, but also on their relative income position within a society? We use infant mortality as a heath status indicator and find a significant and positive link between infant mortality and income inequality using cross-national data for […]
rdan Baseline Scenario adds their thoughts to the trade policy debate: A fundamental principle that we all hold dear is: in industrialized countries, with relatively high income levels, the government can’t be completely out to lunch. After all, we reason, there are democratic processes, watchdogs of various kinds, and we can safely delegate monitoring of […]
by Bruce Webb 1997 II.F62007 II.D7Each year the Trustees of Social Security provide a graphic representation of the results of the three alternative projections: Low Cost, Intermediate Cost, and High Cost represented by results I, II, III respectively. And the overall shape of the graph didn’t vary much from 1997 to 2007 (other selected years […]
Robert Waldmann playing faux naif again (except it’s not faux). What is the point of bundling securities into a special purpose entity and issuing debt tranches with various levels of seniority and issuing (or keeping) an equity tranche which doesn’t promise a fixed payment ? This was a very profitable operation until recently. How could […]